Sandra A. Mamrak

If the ultimate aim of a computing network is resource sharing, then the human component as well as the technical component of networking must be fully investigated to achieve this goal. This research is a first step toward assisting the user in participating in the vast store of resources available on a network. Analytical, simulation, and statistical performance evaluation tools are employed to investigate the feasibility of a dynamic response time monitor that is capable of providing comparative response time information for users wishing to process various computing applications at some network computing node. The research clearly reveals that sufficient system data are currently obtainable, at least for the five diverse ARPA network systems studied in detail, to describe and predict the response time for network time-sharing systems as it depends on some measure of system activity or load level.